Advances in the Third Generation (3G)/Fourth Generation (4G) mobile communication technology and explosive growth of mobile devices, are fueling an unprecedented rapid growth of video traffic over the mobile networks. The wireless capacity is lagging far behind this rapid growth and how to deal with it is the main issue for the mobile network operators. According to some marketing studies, the mobile video growth rate will be 90% per year from 2013 through 2017, this is far out-pacing the growth of the mobile network capacity.
In addition to improve the video coding and wireless spectrum efficiency, more efficiency can be extracted from the optimization of the multimedia transport and mobile network operation optimization. Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) developed an adaptive streaming of video over Hyper-Text Transport Protocol (HTTP) referred to as Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH). DASH allows for adaptation of variable bit rate streaming of video over a throughput varying channel. This is well suited for the mobile video application, where instead of streaming at constant rate that may cause a freeze in playback when network bandwidth is low, DASH allows for switching to a lower rate to avoid freezes and continuing the streaming with a lower quality version.